“Rather an elaborate dressing-gown.” Miss Ashley laughed. “I’m not so vain as all that.”
Sylvia wondered what she would have said to some of Mabel’s dressing-gowns. Now that she was growing used to Miss Ashley’s attire, she began to think she rather liked it. This gown of peacock-blue linen was certainly attractive, and the flowers embroidered upon its front were clearly recognizable as daisies.
During the fortnight before school reopened Sylvia gave Miss Ashley a good deal of her confidence, and found her much less shocked by her experiences than Philip had been. She told her that she felt rather ungrateful in so abruptly cutting herself off from Mabel, who had been very kind to her; but on this point Miss Ashley was firm in her agreement with Philip, and would not hear of Sylvia’s making any attempt to see Mabel again.
“You are lucky, my dear, in having only one person whose friendship you are forced to give up, as it seems to you, a little harshly. Great changes are rarely made with so slight an effort of separation. I am not in favor personally of violent uprootings and replantings, and it was only because you were in such a solitary position that I consented to do what Philip asked. Your friend Mabel was, I am sure, exceedingly kind to you; but you are much too young to repay her kindness. It is the privilege of the very young to be heartless. From what you have told me, you have often been heartless about other people, so I don’t think you need worry about Mabel. Besides, let me assure you that Mabel herself would be far from enjoying any association with you that included Hornton House.”
Sylvia had no arguments to bring forward against Miss Ashley; nevertheless, she felt guilty of treating Mabel shabbily, and wished that she could have explained to her that it was not really her fault.
Miss Ashley took her once or twice to the play, which Sylvia enjoyed more than music-halls. In the library at Hornton House she found plenty of books to read, and Miss Ashley was willing to talk about them in a very interesting way. Philip came often to see her and told her how much Miss Ashley liked her and how pleased they both were to see her settling down so easily and quickly.
The night before term began the four assistant mistresses arrived; their names were Miss Pinck, Miss Primer, Miss Hossack, and Miss Lee. Sylvia was by this time sufficiently at home in Hornton House to survive the ordeal of introduction without undue embarrassment, though, to Miss Ashley’s amusement, she strengthened her French accent. Miss Pinck, the senior assistant mistress, was a very small woman with a sharp chin and knotted fingers, two features which contrasted noticeably with her general plumpness. She taught History and English Literature and had an odd habit, when she was speaking, of suddenly putting her hands behind her back, shooting her chin forward, and screwing up her eyes so fiercely that the person addressed involuntarily drew back in alarm. Sylvia, to whom this gesture became very familiar, used to wonder if in the days of her vanity Miss Pinck had cultivated it to avoid displaying her fingers, so that from long practice her chin had learned to replace the forefinger in impressing a fact.
The date was 1689, Miss Pinck would say, and one almost expected to see a pencil screwed into her chin which would actually write the figures upon somebody’s notebook.
Miss Primer was a thin, melancholy, and sandy-haired woman, who must have been very pretty before her face was netted with innumerable small lines that made her look as if birds had been scratching on it when she was asleep. Miss Primer took an extremely gloomy view of everything, and with the prospect of war in South Africa she arrived in a condition of exalted, almost ecstatic depression; she taught Art, which at Hornton House was no cure for pessimism. Miss Hossack, the Mathematical and Scientific mistress, did not have much to do with Sylvia; she was a robust woman with a loud voice who liked to be asked questions. Finally there was Miss Lee, who taught music and was the particular adoration of every girl in the school, including Sylvia. She was usually described as “ethereal,” “angelic,” or “divine.” One girl with a taste for painting discovered that she was her ideal conception of St. Cecilia; this naturally roused the jealousy of rival adorers that would not be “copy-cats,” until one of them discovered that Miss Lee, whose first name was Mary, had Annabel for a second name, the very mixture of the poetic and the intimate that was required. Sylvia belonged neither to the Cecilias nor to the Annabels, but she loved dear Miss Lee none the less deeply and passed exquisite moments in trying to play the Clementi her mistress wanted her to learn.
“What a strange girl you are, Sylvia!” Miss Lee used to say. “Anybody would think you had been taught music by an accompanist. You don’t seem to have any notion of a piece, but you really play accompaniments wonderfully. It’s not mere vamping.”